Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik
You're waiting till the last gear? You must be very confident in your defender(s). If I'm otherwise ahead (because I gave up on gears and fueled at 3 rotors), I'd throw 2-3 robots into defense with 3 gears left. If you can lock them down to 3 gears left with 15-20 on the clock, you can pull off and climb with reasonable confidence that they're doomed.
Unless 4 rotors becomes utterly mundane and easily achievable, gear heavy alliances are going to have to get creative to keep opponents in the dark about just how many gears they have remaining.
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My intention wasn't on waiting till the last gear, but rather making sure that last gear does not get scored as a primary game objective against a gear focused alliance. I was trying to emphasis the problem with having a gear only alliance, is that it is incredibly difficult to get 12 gears even with mediocre defense. Assuming your drivetrain operates at a 10ft/s when traversing the field, not accounting for defense, each robot will take around 20ish seconds to place a gear. Capping the best gear robots at 5-6 gears. Playing defense around the feeder station, where you have significant vision advantage, is incredibly easy, you could easily knock out 2-3 gears from the opposing alliance even if you have mediocre unpracticed drivers just by getting in their way. Obvious this speculation is alliance dependent and is incredibly situational based on the pick/strategy situation. As a fundamental rule having a good flywheel shooter is essential in high level matches based on how the gear points scale. It will be the difference maker, assuming climbing capabilities on both alliances are similar. It's an interesting prospect because for once, diversifying your interests in FIRST is actually a good thing, something that was not the case for previous years. There is a high-risk high reward element coming from hitting that 4 rotor threshold, and a very intense game of cat and mouse is going to come from either the defending alliance or the offensive alliance. Regardless, my money is on the cat.